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Banner Project to Enliven 7th and 9th Streets

Shaw Main Streets will enliven the neighborhood with colorful street lightpost banners that celebrate a few of the nationally renowned individuals who lived and walked the streets of Shaw at various moments in history.  Click here for a PDF showing a few preliminary renderings of the banners, as well as a map of where they will be placed.

Dubbed "Legends of Shaw,"  the people to be featured on the banners include:

Blanche K. Bruce
The first African American to serve in the U.S. Senate, appointed Register of the Treasury. He was the first African American to have his signature on U.S. currency.
 
Ralph Bunch
Nobel Prize winner and chair of the Department of Political Science at Howard University. He was a Civil Rights leader and member of Roosevelt’s “Black Cabinet.”
 
Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington
Leading American musician, jazz composer, pianist, and band leader.
 
Samuel Gompers
American labor and political leader and founder of the American Federation of Labor (AFL)
 
Bishop Charles Daddy Grace
Founder, builder and organizer of the United House of Prayer For All People.
 
Helen Hayes
Academy Award winning actress and Broadway star namesake of the Helen Hayes Awards.
 
Langston Hughes
American poet, novelist, playwright, short-story writer and newspaper columnist.
 
John Wesley Powell
Civil War veteran, geologist, explorer of the American West.
 
A. Philip Randolph
African American Civil Rights leader and founder of the first Black labor union in the United States.
 
Alma Thomas
First African American woman to have a solo exhibit at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York. She was an art instructor at Shaw Junior High School and the first graduate of the Howard University Art Department.
 
Carter G. Woodson
The founder of Black History Month, historian, author and journalist.

Below are some mockups of the "Legends" banners:
 
  
 
The Legends of Shaw Banner Project is a project of the Shaw Main Streets Design Committee.